Author's Note: If you haven't read the first story in this series, I'll provide a link.
s/14005749/1/Is-the-Doctor-Really-Alone-REVISED
A soft hum sounded throughout the console room. The time rotor in the console's center roared as it ascended and descended in the column, signally that the ship was in flight. A girl with jet black hair sat cross-legged on the jump seat off to the side of the platform, swiping through her smartphone. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, keeping it out of her face. She wore a pink zip-up hoodie with black leggings and cream-colored Converse. One of the grating floor panels was shifted out of place, leaving an opening where the Doctor was currently tinkering with the wires and components of the TARDIS.
It had been a week relative to them since the incident with the Cybermen and Droxia. Elanna had fully stabilized from her regeneration cycle, but it still weighed on her head. She pondered why she was even able to do so in the first place. She knew why. It was more that she didn't realize that she could do it before, and was she even able to do it again if need be? The Doctor was the only one that she could ask about it. She stopped staring at her phone, losing interest in it, and choosing to gaze into the hole in the floor. She sighed lightly; she's tried to approach the subject before but would pause when seeing a sad look wash over the Doctor's face, so she chose to keep quiet. But questions about her regenerating just kept building up inside her head, and her being the ever-curious-one, she wanted answers.
She dropped her phone to her lap and moved to sit on her fingertips, rocking slightly back and forth as she spoke to the quiet console room. "So, do I have multiple lives now like a cat?"
The Doctor poked his head out of the hole, wearing dark protective goggles over his eyes. His brown hair was disheveled, tussled from moving under the console. His face screwed into one of confusion as he turned to face her. "What?"
She tilted her head to the side in contemplation, "With the whole regenerating thing? Do I have like multiple lives now?"
The Doctor looked back down into the floor, glancing up at Elanna a few times before disappearing below. He called out in a calm voice, "I'm not sure, actually. Never been an organically created part-Time Lord before. Well, I had encountered other hybrids before, just not one that was born from human physiologically." Elanna eased off the jump seat, sinking down to the edge of the hole to peer down at him. He knew she was there, but he continued tinkering with machine parts. He pointed up at her, trying to have a stern voice. "Regeneration isn't a game. You don't just get to reset and start over. You're lucky that the only thing that changed was your hair. If you were a full Time Lord, it would be a different story."
Elanna laid down on the grating floor, resting her head on her folded arms at the edge of the hole. She liked to watch him work, not understanding how the parts worked, but it was interesting to watch. "What happens to normal 'Lords of Time'?" She tried to keep her tone light, not wanting him to shut down on her again.
He stopped for a second, taking a side glance up at her briefly before resuming his work. The sonic buzzed softly as he stated matter-of-factly, "We change. Our whole being dies, and it changes completely. We change into a new person."
"But you're still you, yeah? Even if you changed, you're still you."
He let out a sigh, slipping the sonic into his inside suit pocket. Reaching down to plug in the wire he was holding, he ripped off the goggles head and tossed them next to Elanna on the grating. She craned her neck back, thinking that they could've hit her. She relaxed as it just landed next to her. The Doctor ran his hand through his disheveled hair to tame it to no avail. He turned to face the black-haired lass. He was a foot lower than her in the hole. Stepping closer to her, he gripped the edge of the grating on either side of her elbows. "In a sense, yes. I am still 'The Doctor,' just not this version."
She nodded at him, understanding what he was getting at. He had told her about the prophecy about his song coming to an end. It's why she doesn't knock anymore. She just announces herself when entering a room. It spooked him the first time, giving her this panicked expression, and she quickly learned not to do that again. Elanna lifted a hand to run it gently over his cheek. "Even if you don't have this face, I'm sure there are ways that you still come to the surface. Like your fascination with jam,-" She started, but she was cut off.
"Oi! It's good!"
"the necessity to lick things-"
"It's how I identify substances, better than a computer."
"or even coming up with weird phrases that you decide to never use again."
He let go of the grating to straighten his tie, "Got to test them out, nice test run."
She leaned her face closer to him, "My point is just because you change doesn't mean you're completely gone." The Doctor fell silent as Elanna peered into his brown eyes. The eyes that looked so much older than his physical body, they always gave away what he was feeling, even when he tried to hide it. She frowned as she realized something that flickered across those eyes, "That's what scares you the most about it, isn't it? It's not the prophecy itself or the concept of regenerating, but the fear that you won't be this you again. Like this, you will die." His eyes glazed over. He turned away from her, rubbing his hands over his face as he shuddered out a breath. Elanna just stared down into the darkened hole, not really at anything. She knew that she had hit the nail on the head. Silence fell over the console room. Only the grinding of the time rotor echoed throughout it.
Having felt like she should leave him alone for a bit, Elanna pushed her hands to the grating to get up. She was surprised when the Doctor grabbed her wrist. She stared down at him, pausing to let him speak. "You're-"
Suddenly the lights shut off and the console room filled with a scarlet light. An alarm blared through the room, causing Elanna to plaster her hands to her ears to muffle the noise. The Doctor leaped out of the hole as the TARDIS lurched to the side. Elanna was thrown against one of the coral supports as the Doctor grabbed onto the console. Having pulled himself around to the viewscreen, his expression turned to one of dread.
Elanna looped her arm around the coral to keep herself upright from the jolts around the TARDIS. Circuits above her sparked and exploded, white light breaking up the intense red around them. She cried out, "Doctor! What the hell is happening?"
The said Doctor in question was gripping the sides of the console carefully but quickly moved about it, turning knobs and pulling levers. He grunted out, "Good news or bad news?"
She sighed heavily, not releasing her grip as another jolt pushed through the room, causing her to heave into the coral pillar more. "Gah! Good news first!" she barked out, keeping a grip on the post, her eyes screwing shut as she tensed against the support.
The Doctor yelled out, "I know what is causing it. I may have accidentally plugged the wire of the Comparator into the Temporal Stabilizer, and it's causing a power surge. I got distracted."
Rolling her eyes, "You can't seriously be blaming me for this!" She yelped as another jolt rocked through the room. "You're the one who's supposed to know your own damn ship! If that's the good news, what's the heck is bad?"
"We're crashing, and it's gonna be a hard landing! Hold on!" He flipped a switch, the console sparked, the lights overhead burst above him. He made a dash over to the part-Time Lady, standing behind her to use his tall body over her to shield her from the explosions. He gripped the coral as he braced the front of his body to the back of hers, waiting for the impact.
The blue box flew through space, spinning uncontrollably through the atmosphere of the planet Earth. Smoke slithered out through the cracks of the doors, spilling out into the black void. Plummeting into a forest, branches ripped from trunks as the TARDIS crashes horizontally into the soil. A trench of soil trailed behind the box, revealing the destruction it left. A stone statue was uncovered in the crash. Its eyes glowed a bright red, its arm struggling to raise up to the sky. A pink shard glistened in their hand.